The Top 100 Tracks of 2006

Voxtrot don't sound original by any stretch of the imagination, a fact that the Austin quintet doesn't really seem to have a complex about. Like so many indie pop bands before them, they worship in the chapel of the Smiths, genuflecting at Morrissey's wry offhandedness and Johnny Marr's room-filling effects. But Voxtrot offset this devotion by piling up choruses like a wedding cake, spending enough hook capital for four songs in four minutes. Ramesh Srivastava's wordy delivery, and the crisp tightness of his band, only serve to amplify the frenzy the song works itself into around the second and third choruses, their manners disrupted by a reverb-sopped guitar in the left channel that goes from setting a wet pace at the song's intro to elbowing out the rest of the instruments with a giddy solo-- pure melody rendering novelty unnecessary. --Rob Mitchum

49: The Game "It's Okay (One Blood)" [Geffen]

RZA already used the sample of reggae vet Junior Reid screaming at the sky on the Wu-Tang Clan's "One Blood Under W". But here, producer Reefa turns that sample into a host of angels, relentlessly swarming the track with that gravelly moan until it becomes a desperate wordless chant. Accompanied by titanic drums and sweeping strings, the voices steadily help build the song to a diamond-hard operatic banger. It's the perfect way for Game to reintroduce himself as a vengeful lone wolf, spraying anger in all directions after 50 Cent backstabbed him and Dr. Dre abandoned him. Game sounds like rage is eating him from the inside out; he extends olive branches to 50 and Jay-Z before snatching them right back, lashing out against legions of prominent rappers without spelling out the names for us. The video makes the image literal: Game walking through decaying California streets by himself, chin jutted out, chest puffed up, one guy against the world. --Tom Breihan

48: Cassie "Me & U" [Bad Boy]

Actress, dancer, and easy-on-the-eyes protégé of Tommy Mottola and Diddy, you might expect Cassie to be just another multitasking, melismatic diva in the tradition of Mariah or Beyoncé. But "Me & U", put together by Ryan Leslie out of not much more than a few bleeps, some synthesised handclaps, and an auto-tuner, features one of the blankest, most holographic vocals since Chet Baker stepped front stage. Hardly hindered by a low-budget video (intended only for the "European audience," according to the label) which left little of the middle eight suggestion-- "Baby, I'll love you all the way down"-- to the imagination, "Me & U" recalled the crypto-emotional coolness of Cameo circa "Single Life", and proved the most refreshingly minimal r&b hit of the year. --Stephen Troussé

Right off the top, everything appears to be just as they left it on 2003's Echoes : 4/4 hi-hat beat? Check. Stacatto guitar riff? Yup. Cowbell? Of course. But eight seconds in, it's "House of Jealous Lovers: Extreme Makeover Edition": The stark funk of the Rapture's 2002 breakout 12-inch has been given a radiant, lipstick-cherry-glossed polish by producer Paul Epworth, while Mattie Safer's effete vocal sounds much less Gang of Four than "Girls on Film". But the title's exclamations are overshadowed by Safer's bummed rap: "People don't dance more/ They just stand there like this." It's a sentiment that felt truer in 1996 than it does in 2006 (maybe he's been hanging out at too many Black Dice shows?), but the back-up rocksteady crew of b-girls responding to his call make Safer's petty complaint feel like a cause still worth rallying around. And just when you think they've run out of breath, Safer asks, "Y'all ready girls?"-- and it turns into a ballroom blitz. --Stuart Berman

46: Liars "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" [Mute]

Almost every critic who reviewed Liars' third album, Drum's Not Dead, claimed it was a heady concept about two characters named Mt. Heart Attack and Drum. On that map, album closer "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" would be the denouement, a careful and conclusive slope that lets plaintive melody surface above vanquished noise. That's not the case, but "The Other Side" is as completely beautiful and resplendent as that suggests: On a record where thrust is the axiom, and dense textures and their dismal moods are its corollaries, this is an eloquent, perfect rebuttal, like the redolent and forgiving closing score for a film busy with urgency and abrasion. --Grayson Currin

45: Beyoncé "Irreplaceable" [Sony Urban]

In the January 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens writes a column titled "Why Women Aren't Funny", claiming it's because there are more obstacles for men in the ongoing quest to charm, amuse, and romance the opposite sex; men depend on the art of humor for seduction, and apparently, women aren't. Hitchens clearly doesn't listen to Beyoncé. While "Irreplaceable" has a steely tone and traditionalist themes, it's pretty damn hilarious. Naturally, when the song opens "To the left, to the left" from a diva known for her swiveling, thoughts wander to instructive dancing. On the contrary-- Beyoncé, more restrained than ever, simply put "everything you own in a box to the left." That's funny. Toying with expectation and convention, she's taken what could have been typical and made it smart and droll. Now if only her man could relocate his sense of humor. --Sean Fennessey

44: Arthur Russell "Springfield (DFA Remix)" [Audika]

Without Arthur Russell's approach to disco-- reinventing it from the inside out, wielding a single cello line in an elegantly minimalist display of extrapolation-- we almost certainly would not have James Murphy and DFA. It's difficult to imagine either Murphy's sense of rhythm or his sense of space without the generous, introverted productions of the late chamber-disco savant. Murphy's mix strips Russell's already spare original down to the kind of clubfoot thud that once might have anchored a Depeche Mode edit; he proceeds to thread that rickety lattice with winding counterpoints-- voices, stubby Rhodes, perhaps a clarinet?-- and lays tingly synth chords over it all like a protective canopy. The last two minutes are Russell's alone, as he falsettos his way from blossom to blossom, as ghostly as he ever was. --Philip Sherburne

If Can had built a career from Ege Bamyasi's pop moments they would have come up with this song eventually, but Fujiya & Miyagi make the wait worthwhile and Damo was never this coherent. For a song so laidback, subtle, and swinging, it sure dominates its environment, almost to the point of bullying. If it comes up on shuffle, it either enhances whatever else you have going on or it shoves it out of the way and demands to be moved to. As weightless and easy to inhabit as anything released this year. --Mark Richardson

42: Ciara "Promise" [LaFace]

A defining moment in Ciara's career and an instant theme song for freaks everywhere, this smouldering, space-storm slowburner was the song equivalent of sensual massage, wherein your favorite producer's favorite producer, Polow da Don, fashioned a talkbox and glossy-ass ping-pong beats, and Ciara's dewy-eyed love devotional never seemed to stop. At this moment, the studio was the sexiest place on earth (word to Janet and Aaliyah without whom this would not be possible). Ciara sang about her heart opening, but the subtext was more that of her legs: As humpy as Prince's pre-JW days, "Promise" is a prime example of a song that barely grazes the concept of campiness, without going so over the top you can't release it on the radio. But with Polow's synth churning over on itself, the song was almost too much, waves crashing its own climax. Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder had to make "Love to Love You Baby" like, 17 minutes long to achieve this, and Ciara didn't even have to fake an orgasm. --Julianne Shepherd

My friend and fellow rock critic Michaelangelo Matos recently compared Fishscale to Mama Said Knock You Out, an I-haven't-fallen-off-yet-motherfuckers move by a guy who only really fell off in terms of sales, which were never quintuple-platinum to begin with. In this equation, "Be Easy" is the face-busting title track. Pete Rock's rock hard, rock simple drums fuse seamlessly with Ghost's I-AM-QUITE-WORKED-UP flow for a boneheaded, driving track that distills a whole bunch of what's good about hip-hop into less than four minutes: shouting, shit-talking, snares to crack skulls, and some more shit-talking. But even if the beat didn't knock, the way Ghost ends every line with a concussed "UH" like a linebacker Mark E. Smith means the acapella bangs just as hard. --Jess Harvell